Jane Eyre (72 page)

One evening when, at bedtime, his sisters and I stood round him, bidding him good-night, he kissed each of them, as was his custom and, as was equally his custom, he gave me his hand. Diana, who chanced to be in a frolicsome humour—
she
was not painfully controlled by his will, for hers, in another way, was as strong—exclaimed, “St. John! you used to call Jane your third sister, but you don’t treat her as such, you should kiss her too.”

She pushed me towards him. I thought Diana very provoking, and felt uncomfortably confused and while I was thus thinking and feeling, St. John bent his head; his Greek face was brought to a level with mine, his eyes questioned my eyes piercingly—he kissed me. There are no such things as marble kisses or ice kisses, or I should say my ecclesiastical cousin’s salute belonged to one of these classes, but there may be experiment kisses, and his was an experiment kiss. When given, he viewed me to learn the result. It was not striking. I am sure I did not blush; perhaps I might have turned a little pale, for I felt as if this kiss were a seal affixed to my fetters. Certainly it was nothing compared to the demands of Thornfield Hall’s master. I knew the comparison was unfair, but I was powerless to stop the thought. St. John never omitted the ceremony afterwards, and the gravity and quiescence with which I underwent it, seemed to invest it for him with a certain charm.

As for me, I daily wished more to please him, but to do so, I felt daily more and more that I must disown half my nature, stifle half my faculties, wrest my tastes from their original bent, force myself to the adoption of pursuits for which I had no natural vocation and no desire to learn. The things Mr Rochester wanted me to understand, I did, with alacrity. St. John wanted to train me to an elevation I could never reach. It racked me hourly to aspire to the standard he uplifted. The thing was as impossible as to mould my irregular features to his correct and classic pattern, to give to my changeable green eyes the sea-blue tint and solemn lustre of his own.

Not his ascendancy alone, however, held me in thrall at present. Of late it had been easy enough for me to look sad, a cankering evil sat at my heart and drained my happiness at its source—the evil of suspense.

Perhaps you think I had forgotten Mr Rochester, reader, amidst these changes of place and fortune. Not for a moment, even when I tried. His idea was still with me, because it was not a vapour sunshine could disperse, nor a sand-traced effigy storms could wash away. It was a name graven on a tablet, fated to last as long as the marble it inscribed. Even though I didn’t intend to, I often sketched him—even now—in his various moods, serious, sombre, laughing, contemplating, commanding. This mood I tried to avoid in my ruminations for it caused a flutter of unwanted—and seemingly forever denied—sensation deep inside my womanhood. My cousin wanted me in marriage. But just as surely, now that I had known the joys and pleasures—and to be sure—the pains!—I confess I wanted Mr Rochester and no other.

 The craving to know what had become of him followed me everywhere, when I was at Morton, I re-entered my cottage every evening to think of that and now at Moor House, I sought my bedroom each night to brood over it.

In the course of my necessary correspondence with Mr Briggs about the will, I had enquired if he knew anything of Mr Rochester’s present residence and state of health, but, as St. John had conjectured, he was quite ignorant of all concerning him. I then wrote to Mrs Fairfax, entreating information on the subject. I had calculated with certainty on this step answering my end. I felt sure it would elicit an early answer. I was astonished when a fortnight passed without reply, but when two months wore away, and day after day the post arrived and brought nothing for me, I fell a prey to the keenest anxiety.

I wrote again, there was a chance of my first letter having missed. Renewed hope followed renewed effort, it shone like the former for some weeks, then, like it, it faded, flickered, not a line, not a word reached me. When half a year wasted in vain expectancy, my hope died out, and then I felt dark indeed.

A fine spring shone round me, which I could not enjoy. Summer approached; Diana tried to cheer me, she said I looked ill, and wished to accompany me to the sea-side. This St. John opposed; he said I did not want dissipation, I wanted employment; my present life was too purposeless, I required an aim and, I suppose, by way of supplying deficiencies, he prolonged still further my lessons in Hindostanee, and grew more urgent in requiring their accomplishment, and I, like a fool, never thought of resisting him—I could not resist him.

One day I had come to my studies in lower spirits than usual; the ebb was occasioned by a poignantly felt disappointment. Hannah had told me in the morning there was a letter for me, and when I went down to take it, almost certain that the long-looked for tidings were vouchsafed me at last, I found only an unimportant note from Mr Briggs on business. The bitter check had wrung from me some tears and now, as I sat poring over the crabbed characters and flourishing tropes of an Indian scribe, my eyes filled again.

St. John called me to his side to read. In attempting to do this my voice failed me, words were lost in sobs. He and I were the only occupants of the parlour, Diana was practising her music in the drawing room, Mary was gardening—it was a very fine May day, clear, sunny, and breezy. My companion expressed no surprise at this emotion, nor did he question me as to its cause; he only said, “We will wait a few minutes, Jane, till you are more composed.” And while I smothered the paroxysm with all haste, he sat calm and patient, leaning on his desk, and looking like a physician watching with the eye of science an expected and fully understood crisis in a patient’s malady. Having stifled my sobs, wiped my eyes, and muttered something about not being very well that morning, I resumed my task, and succeeded in completing it. St. John put away my books and his, locked his desk, and said, “Now, Jane, you shall take a walk,; and and with me.”

“I will call Diana and Mary.”

“No. I want only one companion this morning, and that must be you. Put on your things; go out by the kitchen-door, take the road towards the head of Marsh Glen, I will join you in a moment.”

I know no medium. I never in my life have known any medium in my dealings with positive, hard characters, antagonistic to my own, between absolute submission and determined revolt. I have always faithfully observed the one, up to the very moment of bursting, sometimes with volcanic vehemence, into the other and as neither present circumstances warranted, nor my present mood inclined me to mutiny, I observed careful obedience to St. John’s directions and in ten minutes I was treading the wild track of the glen, side by side with him.

The breeze was from the west, it came over the hills, sweet with scents of heath and rush; the sky was of stainless blue, the stream descending the ravine, swelled with past spring rains, poured along plentiful and clear, catching golden gleams from the sun, and sapphire tints from the firmament. As we advanced and left the track, we trod a soft turf, mossy fine and emerald green, minutely enamelled with a tiny white flower, and spangled with a star-like yellow blossom, the hills, meantime, shut us quite in; for the glen, towards its head, wound to their very core.

“Let us rest here,” said St. John, as we reached the first stragglers of a battalion of rocks, guarding a sort of pass, beyond which the beck rushed down a waterfall and where, still a little farther, the mountain shook off turf and flower, had only heath for raiment and crag for gem—where it exaggerated the wild to the savage, and exchanged the fresh for the frowning—where it guarded the forlorn hope of solitude, and a last refuge for silence.

I took a seat, St. John stood near me. He looked up the pass and down the hollow; his glance wandered away with the stream, and returned to traverse the unclouded heaven which coloured it, he removed his hat, let the breeze stir his hair and kiss his brow. He seemed in communion with the genius of the haunt, with his eye he bade farewell to something.

“And I shall see it again,” he said aloud, “in dreams when I sleep by the Ganges, and again in a more remote hour—when another slumber overcomes me—on the shore of a darker stream!”

Strange words of a strange love! An austere patriot’s passion for his fatherland! He sat down; for half an hour we never spoke, neither he to me nor I to him, that interval past, he recommenced, “Jane, I go in six weeks. I have taken my berth in an East Indiaman which sails on the 20th of June.”

“God will protect you, for you have undertaken His work,” I answered.

“Yes,” said he, “there is my glory and joy. I am the servant of an infallible Master. I am not going out under human guidance, subject to the defective laws and erring control of my feeble fellow-worms, my king, my lawgiver, my captain, is the All-perfect. It seems strange to me that all round me do not burn to enlist under the same banner—to join in the same enterprise.”

“All have not your powers, and it would be folly for the feeble to wish to march with the strong.”

“I do not speak to the feeble, or think of them, I address only such as are worthy of the work, and competent to accomplish it.”

“Those are few in number, and difficult to discover.”

“You say truly, but when found, it is right to stir them up—to urge and exhort them to the effort—to show them what their gifts are, and why they were given—to speak Heaven’s message in their ear—to offer them, direct from God, a place in the ranks of His chosen.”

“If they are really qualified for the task, will not their own hearts be the first to inform them of it?”

I felt as if an awful charm was framing round and gathering over me, I trembled to hear some fatal word spoken which would at once declare and rivet the spell.

“And what does
your
heart say?” demanded St. John.

“My heart is mute—my heart is mute,” I answered, struck and thrilled.

“Then I must speak for it,” continued the deep, relentless voice. “Jane, come with me to India, come as my helpmeet and fellow-labourer.”

The glen and sky spun round, the hills heaved! It was as if I had heard a summons from Heaven—as if a visionary messenger, like him of Macedonia, had enounced, “Come over and help us!” But I was no apostle—I could not behold the herald—I could not receive his call.

“Oh, St. John!” I cried, “have some mercy!”

I appealed to one who, in the discharge of what he believed his duty, knew neither mercy nor remorse. He continued, “God and nature intended you for a missionary’s wife. It is not personal, but mental endowments they have given you, you are formed for labour, not for love. A missionary’s wife you must—shall be. You shall be mine. I claim you—not for my pleasure, but for my Sovereign’s service.”

“I am not fit for it. I have no vocation,” I said.

He had calculated on these first objections, he was not irritated by them. Indeed, as he leaned back against the crag behind him, folded his arms on his chest, and fixed his countenance, I saw he was prepared for a long and trying opposition, and had taken in a stock of patience to last him to its close—resolved, however, that that close should be conquest for him.

“Humility, Jane,” said he, “is the groundwork of Christian virtues, you say right that you are not fit for the work. Who is fit for it? Or who, that ever was truly called, believed himself worthy of the summons? I, for instance, am but dust and ashes. With St. Paul, I acknowledge myself the chiefest of sinners, but I do not suffer this sense of my personal vileness to daunt me. I know my Leader, that He is just as well as mighty and while He has chosen a feeble instrument to perform a great task, He will, from the boundless stores of His providence, supply the inadequacy of the means to the end. Think like me, Jane—trust like me. It is the Rock of Ages I ask you to lean on, do not doubt but it will bear the weight of your human weakness.”

“I do not understand a missionary life. I have never studied missionary labours.”

“There I, humble as I am, can give you the aid you want. I can set you your task from hour to hour; stand by you always; help you from moment to moment. This I could do in the beginning, soon—for I know your powers—you would be as strong and apt as myself, and would not require my help.”

“But my powers—where are they for this undertaking? I do not feel them. Nothing speaks or stirs in me while you talk. I am sensible of no light kindling—no life quickening—no voice counselling or cheering. Oh, I wish I could make you see how much my mind is at this moment like a rayless dungeon, with one shrinking fear fettered in its depths—the fear of being persuaded by you to attempt what I cannot accomplish!”

“I have an answer for you—hear it. I have watched you ever since we first met, I have made you my study for ten months. I have proved you in that time by sundry tests, and what have I seen and elicited? In the village school I found you could perform well, punctually, uprightly, labour uncongenial to your habits and inclinations. I saw you could perform it with capacity and tact, you could win while you controlled. In the calm with which you learnt you had become suddenly rich, I read a mind clear of the vice of Demas—lucre had no undue power over you. In the resolute readiness with which you cut your wealth into four shares, keeping but one to yourself, and relinquishing the three others to the claim of abstract justice, I recognised a soul that revelled in the flame and excitement of sacrifice. In the tractability with which, at my wish, you forsook a study in which you were interested, and adopted another because it interested me. In the untiring assiduity with which you have since persevered in it—in the unflagging energy and unshaken temper with which you have met its difficulties—I acknowledge the complement of the qualities I seek. Jane, you are docile, diligent, disinterested, faithful, constant, and courageous, very gentle, and very heroic, cease to mistrust yourself—I can trust you unreservedly. As a conductress of Indian schools, and a helper amongst Indian women, your assistance will be to me invaluable.”

My iron shroud contracted round me; persuasion advanced with slow sure step. Shut my eyes as I would, these last words of his succeeded in making the way, which had seemed blocked up, comparatively clear. My work, which had appeared so vague, so hopelessly diffuse, condensed itself as he proceeded, and assumed a definite form under his shaping hand. He waited for an answer. I demanded a quarter of an hour to think, before I again hazarded a reply.